Three years ago Tyler and I got involved in a company called Young Living. We started the journey of detoxifying our house and improving our wellness… taking charge and finding what really works, vs just masking symptoms that create more problems down the road. That was enough for us! We were stoked with the company and with the insane results we saw in us and the kids.
Then the business side entered the scene, which changed our lives in a way we weren’t expecting. It’s now our full time gig, and we’re able to be together 24/7 as a family, travel the world, build our dream home, and the best part: we are able to give in ways we never dreamed we’d be able to.
On top of that, now that we lead a team of over 58,000 families, we’ve been given a big platform.
So far we’ve been blessed to use that platform to accomplish some pretty big things: funding adoptions, giving big gifts to organizations whose work we believe in, meeting needs that might otherwise go unmet. Our prayer has always been that we would use our influence to point everything back to The One who made a way (Jesus!) We know that this money and this opportunity and this voice have not been given to us because of anything WE have done, and they are not ours. We long to be good stewards of everything this journey has brought our way and use it to advance God’s kingdom and not our own.
A recent project we’ve gotten to work on has been really cool. I want to share it with you guys, not to ask for money, not to toot our own horns or show what we have done, but simply to show what God has done. He is still in the business of moving mountains and making a way where there is no way.
First, if you haven’t read the book Kisses From Katie, READ IT. It’s been one of the single most life changing books I have ever read, and I am a big read so that’s saying a lot. It’s knock you on your knees good.
The author of the book, Katie Davis, has an incredible ministry, and one of the recent components of her ministry has been opening a school where she lives in Uganda. You can read more about the school HERE.
My friend Jessica, who is on another (awesome!) team within Young Living and who has played a big part in the Young Living Foundation’s presence in Uganda, came to me recently with a collaboration idea. She wanted to get diffusers and oils into the Amazima school.
Ty was able to visit Uganda and the Amazima School with Jessica and the Young Living Foundation last summer, and some of our best friends live there as missionaries right across the street from Katie (small world). That orange dirt has earned a special place in our hearts!
We decided to team up and see what our teams could accomplish.
We set a lofty goal of getting a certain list of oils into the Amazima school and a diffuser for each classroom.
What our teams did far surpassed that.
Thanks to the generosity of our teams, EVERY child in the school will sleep in a dorm with a diffuser in it. EVERY child will have appropriate wellness supplies to prevent icky diseases and unwellness. EVERY classroom will be outfitted with a diffuser. Even the “house parents” (because the kiddos live at the school) have been blessed with oils + diffusers. And we have diffusers and oils left over for the additional classrooms and dorms that will be built in the coming months as well. Above that, these kids feel a little more SEEN and a little more VALUABLE. As they should, because they are so so very valuable.
Jessica is hand delivering the goodies to the school herself next month, and bringing with her a plaque that will hang there that says, “This school was made wonderful by Jesus, and made oily by the Happy Oilers + Oil Sistas.” How stinking cool is that?
We will never stop ensuring that our team is known first & foremost by the way we radically love people. No matter what we accomplish, we know that “how we walk with the broken says more than how we sit with the great.” It is always our goal to be good stewards of what we have been given, and Young Living and this journey have given us so much.
It’s about more than oils, you guys. It’s ALWAYS been about so much more than oils. It’s about “wellness, purpose, and abundance” (YL’s slogan) and it’s about using ANY platform we are given, to glorify the King.
I can not wait until Ty or I get the chance to go back to Uganda’s Amazima School and see the school for ourselves!
Today is a good day. Every day on this journey is a darn good day! #thankful
XOXO
M